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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26128999">unspoken</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_green/pseuds/ginger_green'>ginger_green</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout: New Vegas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Age Difference, Autistic Character, Awkward Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Nonverbal Communication, Pining</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:13:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,204</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26128999</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_green/pseuds/ginger_green</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Courier has brought a piece of the Divide into Raul's home.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Courier/Raul Tejada</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>unspoken</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She has been gone for too long.</p><p>Not that she set any hard limits. Call it a hunch if you will. Raul worried.</p><p>He parsed through her leftover gear for what must've been like fourteenth time this week. Nothing to fix. Nothing to improve on. Nothing to take his mind off her.</p><p>He sat still for a minute, eyes closed, each wheezing breath a yield of labor - for he was so very old and so very, very tired. Inside him crawled an ancient vine. A dark, deep hunger, bred of greed and anguish. It lived, it pulsed, and it was hurting him.<br/><br/>He didn't believe it at first - but this is what he used to be before her. He dragged the loss and the suffering wherever he went, slouching under it, to the point when his body ached physically from the moral burden it was carrying. Sometimes he would stare long into the dark horizon, and splayed across the desert was his pain - eternal, boundless, abysmal.</p><p>The Divide has her now. All he can do is wait.</p><p>He must've drifted off because when he opened his eyes again the sky was already darkening, with only the slightest glow back where the Strip was. Raul rolled over, cursing his old joints, and pulled up slowly like the ruin he was. Outside, sand scrubbed the old walls, and coyotes cried. And something stirred.</p><p>The door creaked and let in a ray of purpur sunlight. It crossed the floor and warmed Raul's withered hand. He stood, fingers still covered in oil, jumpsuit half-zipped - way too rush, way too excited.</p><p>She's back.</p><p>She walked in quietly like the dry Mojave wind that scrubs your cheek and leaves sand in your hair. He was used to it by now, the way she spoke without words, sometimes with a gentle tug on his sleeve or a few signs, more often - with just her posture, the span of her shoulders, the tensity with which she squeezed her rifle. And just having looked at her now, he knew something was wrong.</p><p>She didn't pull down her duster, didn't stop to put the rifle on his workbench. Instead, she crossed the room and stopped only a foot away from him. There was a sharp feeling in her figure, something so stressful it made him uneasy.</p><p>"Boss? What's wro-"</p><p>He didn't get to finish. She pulled him into a hug, wrapping her strong arms around his fragile waist and burying her face in his collar. Raul choked on his question; he'd be redder than a lobster had he the skin for it. She smelled like the Mojave - of rust, burning rubber, and cattle. But there was more beneath that scent - the subtle hints of ozone, damp caves, leaking fuel. A bad, mournful mixture.</p><p>His head began to spin. He had to grab her shoulders for balance. She wasn't normally a hugger and Raul tended to agree with her on that. He's been especially restrained ever since he discovered the waves of youthful heat which her touch sent through his body, like a chain of tiny nuclear explosions on his rotten skin.</p><p>She's human. He's a man with a hole in his face. She's quiet and focused; he won't shut up. She's young, Dios mio, <em>so young</em> - he's fit to be her great-grandfather! It pained and wounded him, the way he shouldn't have felt but still did, the way she made him young and able, the way she made two centuries of loss worth suffering through.</p><p>Unable to push her away, he patted her on the head with an awkward, father-like tenderness.</p><p>"Hey. Don't crush my ribs while you're at it." He couldn't see her face but he knew she laughed. Just with her eyes. "Hungry? I've got steak in the fridge. Cola too. And if you let me go, I might even dig up some specialized pocket candy."</p><p>He settled her on the mattress, trying to distract himself from the smell still lingering in the air. He didn't eat much but always kept some food on hand in case she showed up.</p><p>As she chewed on the lukewarm meat, he inspected her gear to keep his eyes from wondering. Her rifle could use a cleaning. A few dents on the helmet too; shouldn't take more than a minute...</p><p>He paused, feeling her fingers brush against his knee. It took an effort to face her again. She stared into his chest - closest she ever got to an eye contact. Raul sighed and put the rifle down.</p><p>"You're awful quiet, boss. What, no singing of heroics? No jaw-dropping anecdotes?.. Not even a compliment to the chef?"</p><p>She hid a smile in the corner of her mouth, but soon her look was serious again; it made him nervous. She pulled on his hand until he was so close their breath was one warm pulse in the cool breeze of night. He could read it beneath her skin, the story he wasn't part of, the weight of memory she had to lug alone. She's changed. She had faced something in that hell, something that called and pulled her in - and left a piece of the Divide inside her.</p><p>Her eyes spoke volumes in a language he didn't understand. Her lips touched his, carefully and slowly, as if probing for weakness. His mind went blurry with panic.</p><p>"Wait--boss!.." he recoiled; she let him go instantly, and for some reason it made him feel cold. "What--how--why are you even?.."</p><p>Loss of words wasn't familiar to him. He struggled to piece together the many questions buzzing in his brain, the statements and arguments and confessions, and found nothing but white noise. The Courier made a few signs, some of which he didn't recognize, but the general message still got through.</p><p>
  <em>Long time coming.</em>
</p><p>Raul stared at her hands. She grabbed his wrists gently, not pulling, not claiming. Only clinging. Asking. Against his scars and lesions her calloused palms were soft, even tender.</p><p>No one held him like that in a long, long time. In fact, he could only remember one person to look so softly at his irradiated flesh, to face the tragedy of his being and not turn away. The rose-shaped wound from the past. Rafaela.</p><p>"Oi puta cielo e infierno... listen, boss. I'm flattered, I really am, but... how would we even go about it? A woman like you, well, let's say if there isn't half of the Strip queued outside your suite at the Lucky 38 it's only because the metal bellhopper has scared them all off. And you want <em>this?</em> A ghoul in a jumpsuit? I mean, you've always had bizarre tastes, but this... It can't be what you want."</p><p>What came next wasn't staggering to him for the voice that escaped her lips but for the titanic effort with which she raised her eyes to look into his. The sound was like sandpaper, coarse and scrappy. Barely a whisper.</p><p>"It is."</p><p>It broke, obliterated him. His sense of worthlessness, his posturing and restraint - it all was washed away, drowned by the sheer magnitude of her gesture. He cupped her face and couldn't stop, couldn't hold back anymore. He covered her eyelids with kisses, torn, weathered lips too poor a worship for her features.</p><p>"You don't need to do that."</p><p>The months he spent shadowing her, the ghost vaquero of Mexico City; the weeks he spent waiting, digging through the scrap and looking at the horizon, knowing she's out there somewhere; the obvious impossibility of her ever caring as much as he did - for who'd want an old ghoul whose sole talent is turning toasters into landmines - he put them all into his kisses, struggling to translate his thoughts into the form she could comprehend. <em>Amada, mi vida. You don't need to make eye contact. You don't need to look or talk or even breathe in my direction. I cannot believe you would allow it, but if you do, I'll make it so that you shall never have to do what you don't want to, you'll never long, never struggle alone. The world will bend its knee before you as I have, and all will be as you envision. For you are the goddess of Wasteland and I am your priest and prophet... so long as you'll have me. And all of my bone spurs, of course.</em></p><p>She pushed him on his back and straddled his hips, each kiss like a dose of RadAway - a healing touch that left him dizzy and lightheaded. She could almost kiss it all away. The burns, the ruins. The loss. The Wasteland.</p><p>"Wait... " He halted her, the heat of her breath almost thick enough to drink, to savor and devour. He dug into her pocket where she kept the Rad-X. He unscrewed the lid and put the scarlet pill into her mouth, and as she swallowed it her tongue flicked against his thumb and made his heart skip a beat. The bitter taste of medicine and the sweetness of Nuka-Cola mixed with the dust on her lips, and he could kiss and kiss her forever just to feel it all, to know that taste in every detail.</p><p>She was so good to him, so very merciful - and still, as she pulled his jumpsuit down and took off his undershirt, he shuddered. His chest was one huge scar, jutting with ribs and pieces of meat. He didn't see how it could inspire anything but disgust.</p><p>But she leaned in and kissed his neck, then made a wet trail of bites to his collarbones. He tensed up against her touch, but she slowed down and took her time until he could relax. Her teeth left a bleeding mark just under his areola. His breath hitched and he whimpered softly, clinging to her like a wrecked ship. She held him, and rocked him, and teased him. As if he was a normal man. As if he was worthy of her.</p><p>He stopped her only when she began to fiddle with the rest of his clothes. She looked at him in surprise, and then her eyes darted down, and then she understood. It caused her no distress, however, as she leaned in again and gripped his thighs. The weight of her body made him hot and mellow.</p><p>"Do you really... Oh. Oh god..." her hands, god in heaven, her rough hands that claim and hold and take-- "You... you really know how to break a man, don't you?.."</p><p>She did break him. She broke his every bone and put him back together. He was the quiet type, his shaking breaths only signs of pleasure. And that was exactly how she liked it. Quiet, focused, each action full of meaning.</p><p>
  <em>You are worthy. You are worth surviving for, worth coming back to. You are more than a man of skill, more than a gunslinger - you are Raul, and you are treasured. I won't let you put yourself down, I will not stand for your self-destruction, I will overrule your misery and pain, and we will share them as we share our food. My mind is quiet with you. I am home.</em>
</p><p>She praised his fingers and his legs, his back, his throat and stomach. She has claimed him as the Divide has claimed her, and in this act she put a small piece of it inside him - a small piece of the apocalypse, stuck in his heart like a splinter. For the Divide was death, but it was also the new beginning.</p><p>She wouldn't let him go until he was out of breath, bitten and beaten, wet, soft, malleable. Then she laid him down gently and stroked his bald head until his breaths became long and deep. She rocked back and forth and hummed a pre-War song.</p><p>Then she demanded a bath.</p><p>Bathing was always a big deal in the Mojave. Water was scarce and so were the means to heat it. The only thing they didn't lack for was soap. Bighorner fat-based soap. Ugh.</p><p>Grouchily, Raul filled the bathtub outside and made a small fire to warm the water. They fit into it together, feeling only slightly crowded; as any ghoul, Raul was a small man, and the Courier didn't take up much space either. He still elbowed her playfully, noting how cute her chubby shoulders look when they blush from heat. She leaned back and closed her eyes, face full of peace and comfort.</p><p>Raul let her rest, and only called out after a long while.</p><p>"Boss?"</p><p>Her eyes opened, though she looked at the sky instead of him.</p><p>"Don't know if you noticed, boss, but, uuhhm... I'm old. Too old to have a fling anyway. Not desperate enough too. So, tell me... is this really worth it to you? Or did you just decide to blow off steam in a very weird, very poor-life-choices kind of way?"</p><p>The Courier sighed and took his hand. She brought it up and kissed one of the knuckles, the one that had the least skin on it and had a glistening joint bulging through the flesh. Raul couldn't help but laugh.</p><p>"I guess that about answers it. You really are nuts, you know that?"</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this work is fucking cursed and that's exactly how i like it. Raul has no dick. good day.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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